When it comes to online video, Facebook and YouTube have a rivalry that matches the intensity of Mariah Carey vs. whichever new pop singer is being compared to her at the moment. While YouTube has the distinction of being, you know, the top platform for online video, Facebook has the community and built-in audience for some huge growth in online video that allows it to compete with the top platform for online video. It’s like the two popular kids running for class president, but one of them is the president’s kid and the other one is just super popular. And also they keep sabotaging each other, even though no one asked them to sabotage each other.

Meanwhile, Snapchat vs. Instagram.

This intense rivalry between Facebook and YouTube has skewed a lot of things for online content creators looking to promote and/or create on the platforms. For example…

Views on Facebook are different than views on YouTube.

YouTube – 69 views

Facebook – 235 views

The pictures are of the same video I posted to both YouTube and Facebook. On YouTube, the video got 69 views while on Facebook, it received a little over 230 views. That is a significant enough increase to make any creator pack up their YouTube channel and move exclusively to Facebook.

But wait! Those Facebook views aren’t real. On YouTube, a view is counted when someone actually clicks on the video and watches it for at least one second. If it’s an accidental click, it still counts as a view. For Facebook, since their videos autoplay on timelines, those views only count how many times that video appeared on a Facebook timeline. The person doesn’t even have to turn the sound on, be an active member of my community, or pay more than 3 seconds to the video before scrolling up. In fact, on Facebook, you can pay to ensure more people have your video on their timeline through ads and hence give your video more “views” despite the fact maybe only one of those hundred views was a legitimate, “I wanna watch this video” view.

I mean you can…but it’s pretty fruitless unless your Facebook followers have you on “See First” notifications. This is an infamous result of the YouTube/Facebook feud. Pretty much Facebook has their algorithm rigged so that anything with that precious YouTube link will get seen as little as possible or not at all. I’ve personally seen “not at all” more often than not. Meanwhile, because Facebook loves their videos so much, a Facebook video post will get seen more than a regular text post.

The only way I’ve been able to get around this little trick is to put my YouTube link in the comments of my post and have a call to action at the end of my post to have my audience click the link in the comments. This trick literally only works because Facebook can’t set up an algorithm for comments…yet.

Also YouTube doesn’t have an auto-publish feature for Facebook, which is annoying but at least my followers there see my videos most of the time.

But at least they can agree on captions.

The great thing though is that despite their great and never-ending rivalry, YouTube and Facebook’s algorithms both help out a creator that puts captions on their videos. In fact on YouTube, creators will see a 3% increase in views for videos with captions. For Facebook, people will actually see your video and you won’t have to pay a dime.

I just really dislike Facebook’s requirement to pay for people to see your content.

Even though both sites do it for self-serving purposes, I like to think they’re doing it to become more accessible to the hard of hearing and I am very much in favor of this algorithm promotion. I’m also in favor of anything that lets my Facebook audience actually see what I post to Facebook.

I spent 40 hours working on my senior project and Facebook only let 9 people see it. 😡

So YouTube decided to change up its algorithm again. The last big algorithm change came in 2011 when YouTube shifted the emphasis from views to minutes watched, which as Ross O’Donovan of the YouTube channel RubberNinja pointed out, screwed over short form content creators on the platform.

They fucked me and all my animator friends in 2011 and big surprise they’ve come to fuck the rest of you. https://t.co/wTEhTBtmiE

There are problems with this system. For example, yes as Klein remarked, this is basically a reversion to the old YouTube dependent on click bait and begging for likes. There will definitely be a drop in quality on YouTube, but there will also be a drop in 10 minute long videos that should only be 2 minutes long but the creator is dragging it out as long as they can to get those sweet, sweet minutes watched time.

Oops my hand slipped.

The reason for this change is theorized to be for purely commercial reasons, especially given how concerned YouTube has recently become over whether or not they’re “advertiser-friendly” and the fact that a more engaged audience means more people willing to buy a product that someone is selling them.

YouTube, as usual, has no comment on the subject as of this writing.

However, despite the initial backlash, I actually have some positive-neutral expectations for the change. As a creator myself who focuses on small form content and has a lovely engaged audience, this change is right up my alley. But I also have yet to receive a single check from YouTube. My livelihood doesn’t depend on it. There are a lot of creators that I’ve been following for years whom I love and would be absolutely devastated if their channels get hit by this change. (Game Grumps, my bby, don’t ever leave me.)

So good things about this change:

Live-streaming will never be better on YouTube. YouTube has been placing an insane amount of emphasis on live-streaming to the point where I even found a small margin of channel growth after only streaming for an hour one night. That might be the future of gaming on YouTube, which sucks because most of the YouTube I (and many other people) watch is Let’s Plays (Game Grumps), but with the popularity of Twitch, YouTube could definitely be gearing up to be a main competitor with them which would mean diminishing its ‘Let’s Play’ section and forcing those gamers to go into live streaming on YouTube Gaming.

Sketches and parodies, things that can be shareable on any platform and make advertisers happy, will be making a huge comeback so shout-out to those small form creators who stuck it out during the minutes-watched emphasis period and will finally be able to make their comeback.

It’ll all be over soon, Jack. You’re almost free.

3. We might actually see some bigger creators interacting with their audience more. That’s been the way of life for smaller creators for ages now, but bigger creators have fallen by the wayside on that front in favor of milking those sweet, sweet sponsorship deals and doing whatever else big YouTubers do instead of taking five minutes to chat with their fans in the comments/tweets/Facebook posts/etc.

Now for the bad parts of this change:

Yeah gaming channels will take a hit. Most huge YouTubers will take a hit. The overall quality of YouTube will take a hit. We’ll be going back to the dark ages of viral videos, clickbaits, and likes-for-likes that defined the pre-2011 YouTube. If you think there are assholes on YouTube now, oh man. Wait until the next wave of steroid infused monkey who knows how to work the word ‘sexy’ and make a video at least two minutes long hits. Really anything that would go viral on Facebook, which we all know how good those videos are.

This was shared yesterday with NO ONE NOTICING IT WAS AN APRIL FOOL’S JOKE.

Speaking of Facebook, you know that problem where parody accounts who can’t come up with their own content just steal YouTuber’s content and market it as their own? Oh yeah. That’s going to get way worse if we have a boom in short form content and it’s going to hurt twice as much.

As Ethan Klein said in his video, there’s going to be a huge influx of people using gift cards to lure people to like, comment, and subscribe. There’s just going to be a huge influx of creators preying on their audience for likes, comments, and subscriptions. It’s going to be like a Google+ YouTube promo page up in here.

Only time will tell whether the good will outweigh the bad with these changes. For now, the moral of the story seems to be, as usual, YouTube is crap at explaining their changes to their creators and also everyone likes freaking out at every little change on the platform.

I spoke with three creators on the platform about why finding success on YouTube is important and made a mini-documentary out of it. If you could check it out and let me know what you think, that would be great. If I missed something in this blog post that you would like me to address, let me know via Twitter because WordPress comments are a little wonky to reply to.

PewDiePie, YouTube’s most subscribed creator, announced last Sunday that he would be filming the second season of his YouTube Red show ‘Scare PewDiePie’ for the next month, confirming the renewal of a series that has received an astounding rating of 1.5 stars out of 5 on IMDB, Common Sense Media, and tv-episodes.com.

Now I love PewDiePie. I greatly respect him as a creator, even if I’m not a fan of his gaming videos, and my first real exposure to him was through the first season of ‘Scare PewDiePie’. I personally found it to be a fun experience and it made me laugh harder than most TV shows. However, I am not the fan of the idea of a second season of ‘Scare PewDiePie’.

The main reason for my disinterest is based solely on the most entertaining factor of the first season which was how spontaneous the scares were. They had the actress playing his obsessed assistant freaking him out, he didn’t even know when the first episode was being filmed, and he had no idea what to expect with any of the challenges.

My fear with the second season is that we’ll lose that entertaining edge that made the first season so glorious in the first place. He’ll know what to expect and unless YouTube can get creative, it’ll just be a repeat of the first season which had lost its magic by “Level 10”.

First vs. Last episode of ‘Scare PewDiePie’ Season 1

For me, a better second season of ‘Scare PewDiePie’ would be to not scare PewDiePie. He could still be involved in the creative process and act like a front to the whole thing (who says he’s not already?), but instead they could ‘Scare Markiplier’ or ‘Scare Jackscepticeye’. Both are popular let’s players on YouTube with a committed massive fan base. There wouldn’t be a problem with finding viewers for it at the very least and from a creative standpoint, it would be great to see someone new in the seat PewDiePie is hoarding.

Markiplier in the second episode of ‘Scare PewDiePie’ season one.

However, maybe this second season of ‘Scare PewDiePie’ will improve what the first season seriously lacked on and up that general 1.5 star review. There could be improved sets, a less obvious fake person implanted to freak PewDiePie out, and they could recruit more people to help out. One of the easiest and biggest ways they could improve the series is to involve his community in one way or another. While I understand the need to appeal for a larger audience, a large part of YouTube Red’s exclusive shows’ failures is that they’re taking something (or someone) with a massive community and ripping the community out. Sure in ‘Scare PewDiePie’, he does the bro-fist and his classic intro, but there’s no mention of Edgar, Maya, Slippy, Marzia, or even any involvement with fans aside from some staged events to start an episode.

Overall, I’ll probably still watch the second season because I found the first one so amusing, even if the ending was terrible and some of the stages reeked of a cheap haunted house rather. But I’m just saying there are many improvements to be made if they want the second season to be successful at all. Either way, I guess it’s just more money in PewDiePie’s pocket.

Want more of my thoughts on PewDiePie? Well no look further. Also add me on PewDiePie’s Tuber Simulator! I’m TheMaddness22 on it and I NEED THE FRIENDS. I’m seriously so addicted to that app you have no idea. I almost spent ACTUAL money on it. It’s crazy.

Laci Green, a SexEd and social justice YouTuber with over 1.5 million subscribers, has recently found herself in some hot water after putting a copyright claim on a video made by YouTuber ‘Roaming Millenial’ on the basis that Roaming Millenial used Green’s image in a video to make money, which to Green is a clear copyright violation because she has “learned 2 law”.

@MrRepzion it’s a copyright violation to use someone’s image to make money. learn 2 law.

Now I am someone who has “learned 2 law” in school with various classes and have even exclusively studied copyright on YouTube for papers. The first thing you need to know is that the internet and copyright are not friends. Viacom International, Inc. v. YouTube, Inc. is proof of this as the initial lawsuit was filed in 2007 with the final settlement given in 2014 after a lengthy court battle. [x]

For Laci Green’s situation, let’s look at a court case in which a woman sued YouTube for the removal of a video because her appearance in the video did not reflect the beliefs of the actual video: Garcia v. Google, Inc. [x]

The woman, Cindy Lee Garcia, is an actress who auditioned and appeared in the short film on the basis that it was a“an HD 24P historical Arabian Desert adventure film”, but the footage, including her performance, was instead used to create the Islamphobic short film Innocence of Muslims. Garcia sued YouTube in order to remove the video from the site, claiming that the video infringed on her personal copyright as an actress.

This is sounding a little familiar.

However, while the initial decision ruled in Garcia’s favor and removed the video from YouTube, that decision was overturned in May 2015 citing that “Therefore, we agree with Google that Garcia granted Youssef an implied license” and “To be protected, Garcia’s acting performance must be a“work.” Congress has listed examples of copyrightable works, like architectural works, motion pictures, literary works, and pictorial or sculptural works. The nature of these works is significantly different from an actress’s individual performance in a film, casting doubt on the conclusion that the latter can constitute a work.” They also decreed that only the spoken words would be copyrightable, but given how the director dubbed over the actress’s words it does not apply to Garcia. [x]

TL;DR – Actors/Actresses are not copyrighted material themselves. Only the spoken word in the material.

Now Innocence of Muslims earned Cindy Lee Garcia a ‘fatwa‘ calling for her death.[xx] Roaming Millenial’s video, which only criticizes Green’s opinion of cultural appropriation, does not have the same affect and even it did, the courts have already decided that an actress/performer’s image cannot be copyrighted. Even if it could be copyrightable, Green’s image is still only used for commentary and criticism which is within the rights of fair use.

In the hours following the induction of the new “Community” tab on chosen creators’ channels, a new bug has swept across YouTube that has supposedly wiped the analytics for the past 28 days and demonetized the entire YouTube channel for many creators. While it doesn’t seem to be a problem for most YouTubers, there is currently no evident pattern on who or why some creators are hit by this bug. It has affected channels as small as 15 subscribers to channels with over a million.

Creators attempting to access analytics beyond the main screen are met with the infamous “Trained Monkeys” 500 Internal Server error screen. This is usually an indication that the site is undergoing some major maintenance, which is no surprise given the introduction of the new “Community” tab on some major YouTube channels. The only indication that YouTube is aware of their technical troubles is a standard “data is delayed” update for September 7 – 10, which some creators will note doesn’t necessarily completely cover the last 28 days coverage currently affected.

This does seem to simply be an aesthetic error. From my personal experience, my subscriber count has actually gone up during the course of this bug so the actual analytics seem to operating fine. It should also be noted that the estimated revenue option has stuck around on the main screen. The only internal issue at this time seems to be through uploading where some creators have encountered difficulty with “claim asset can’t be created”.

Contrary to popular belief, this bug is also unrelated to the recent policy update by YouTube. If it was in relation, creators would’ve received an email warning them of the demonetization.

None of the channels affected are in trouble, yet. It is, however, a problem YouTube should probably fix soon. The annoyance of not being able to see working analytics is one thing, but preventing YouTubers from uploading and monetizing their videos is a very serious bug that needs to be addressed quickly.

Over the past couple of days, YouTube has implemented some new “policy changes” that has affected not one, not two, but ALL of my favorite YouTube channels. Long story short: YouTube released a list of vague infractions that allows them to demonetize videos on the principle that they’re not “advertiser-friendly.”

This development has, frankly, made YouTube into yet another war zone not seen since The Fine Bros tried to trademark the word “React” and I’m sure people people aren’t going to shut up about it until next week when YouTube fixes the wording on their emails and fixes the bot that is automatically flagging videos with certain tags on them. At first, I felt the same fire in my belly that everyone else felt when Philip DeFranco first broke the news. However, 12 hours later, I think it’s time everyone sped up the shutting up process because now we’re getting to the overreaction area that just turns out click bait-y videos and articles.

And because the YouTube community loves lists almost as much as they love overreacting, I made a list that I’m going to title 5 Reasons You Should Quit Crying About the YouTube Policy Changes.

1. They didn’t even change the policy. These policy “changes” have actually been around for a while. The only change is that YouTube has just now started telling creators about their demonetized videos. Now that’s the real problem here that literally no one is discussing. How long have creators had videos demonetized without notification? No one knows and that’s the true scary part. However this leads to…

2. This is actually a good sign for YouTube creators (?). With the changes in this policy implementation, this is evidence that YouTube is attempting to communicate more clearly with their creators. For years, the YouTube corp. has just sort of wallowed in the background as the creators ran amuck freely, only speaking up to yell at the creators. This is the first step to YouTube corp. initializing contact with the creators so that they can find a happy middle ground to compromise on where YouTube can appease advertisers and creators can appease themselves/fans. However, YouTube has sort of stepped on the creators’ toes during the first dance with this one so maybe next time? With a better worded email?

3. Your favorite YouTubers can still swear, oh my god, it’s not that big of deal. YES your favorite YouTubers can still swear their happy little asses off and not get their videos taken down. (Actually, this tidbit was a huge relief for this Game Grumps fan, but I digress.) YouTube is not looking to take down the YouTubers who use curse words as regular parts in their conversations. YouTube is looking to take down the videos where those cuss words are used explicitly to hurt or offend. Homophobic videos, Islamophobic, Racism….you get the picture. YouTube is a huge platform. Not everyone who is a part of it is a good person and they shouldn’t get money for harboring hate.

4. YouTube always has poor bots. We know this from 10 years of Content ID. Clearly this first phase of implementing their policy has had some issues, especially with videos addressing mental illness, suicide, rape, etc. It’ll be fixed within the month or two, especially with the amount of outcry by their biggest creators. If the bots aren’t fixed, then let me direct you to the appeals process. If it’s the same as the new one they implemented for incorrect copyright claims, then there shouldn’t be a problem with losing out on money you deserve. The only problem would be the sheer size of claims which just means you’ll get your money later than expected.

5. No, YouTube isn’t censoring anyone. Quit saying that. If YouTube was “censoring” these violators, they would’ve completely removed the video. But they’re not. Instead, they’re just removing the monetization from that video which is NOT censorship. It’s just business. Yes in a way, this is a form of censorship since the larger YouTube community revolves around creating videos they can monetize, but at the same time it isn’t censorship. At all. YouTubers can still make their usual videos that violate these policies, but just not get paid for it. As a YouTube creator who has yet to see a dime from YouTube, I have little sympathy for the creators whining solely about “censorship”. Most YouTubers don’t even depend their paychecks solely on YouTube anymore. They have merchandise, Patreon, businesses, and etc. that pay them way more than that YouTube paycheck. If you’re not those lucky YouTubers, then I’m sorry? I guess? Go through the appeals process? Once again, very hard for me to garner sympathy when I personally have to work three jobs on top of being a full time student and still find the time to do the YouTube thing.

Where’s that eye roll emojii when you need it?

So in conclusion, all of YouTube is a massive drama queen. None of them like change and all of this will blow over within the month. Everyone is forgetting that YouTube grew from the ground up. They weren’t always a part of Google (all hail the overlord), they weren’t always the leader in online video, and they definitely don’t always know what they’re doing. As YouTube grows beyond YouTube corp.’s capabilities, we’ll always have incidents like this where YouTube corp. attempts to rope in their herd and ends up getting trampled by the stampede.

YouTube isn’t over and there’s never going to be another YouTube to compete with it. We’re just going to have to work with what we have and help it grow as we grow so we can create the best situation for creators and YouTube corp.

Oh man. When I first heard about Instagram Stories, I immediately jumped on the It’s-Copying-Snapchat-So-I-Hate-It bandwagon. I mean, it’s so obvious they’re trying to bank on an already mega-popular service they didn’t even bother to change the name. That kind of laziness clearly shows a lack of care for the product, so why should we, the consumers, care for it as well?

Oh man oh man. I was so wrong.

Flipping through the very first Instagram Stories from my friends, I fell in love almost as quickly as I first hated it. The glorious transitions between pictures, the improvement in quality of the pictures, and the fact that I didn’t have to work to follow these people made for a swift commitment to the product. Seriously, one of my biggest problem with Snapchat is that you have to work to get followers. Yeah there’s like five different ways to follow people on Snapchat, but none of them include a direct link that I could add to my already growing block of links to my other social media content. Believe it or not, people are lazy and will not actively search for something without a link if they can get away with it. Instagram does not have this fault and I already love them more for it.

Ah yes my glorious media empire, in 50 words or less.

If that wasn’t enough to bide me over, the sheer quality difference between Instagram and Snapchat definitely did it. Instagram’s Stories makes Snapchat pictures look like they were take on a Razor phone. In fact, everything about Instagram Stories makes Snapchat look like a kid’s half-assed coding project turned in for a B+. The aesthetics are just too pleasing on the Instagram Stories. Not only that, but right off the bat from its launch it offers more drawing tools and basic aesthetic filters than Snapchat ever has in the four years of its existence.

My only concern with the Instagram Stories is blatantly the user base. I am worried that not enough people will jump on bored with it and I will be stuck on Snapchat for the rest of my social media existence. I mean, I’m still stuck until Instagram develops a better way to connect people directly, but if Snapchat disappeared tomorrow I wouldn’t even blink an eye. In fact, I was even considering deleting my Snapchat as soon as I fell in love with Instagram Stories. But, you know, the direct message thing. Does anyone even use this?I just wish Instagram had thought of this concept first. Right now the only one-up Snapchat offers compared to Instagram is the location based filters. Other than that, Instagram has clearly shown it can do everything else Snapchat can but better. It doesn’t have the annoying blocks of Stories from corporations (Looking at you, Buzzfeed) or the ads (yet) or a way to negate it’s unique features (Looking at you, Snapchat Memories). It’s everything Snapchat Stories wish it could be, but its success is forever going to be shadowed and cursed by the legacy of Snapchat Stories. That’s the true tragedy is that something this good will always be overshadowed by something that bad.

But hey, at least Snapchat has a dog filter, amirite?

What’s even the point of this then?

Follow me on my Instagram to check out my Insta-Story as it happens! Or just search “Maddness22” on Snapchat. Sometimes I open it to the public. It’s pretty neat. I hate it.